Sydney hotel workers to protest World Bank funding of Jakarta hotel

ACTU media alert, 7 February 2001

For media diaries
Rally - 10 am Friday February 9, 2001
Place: Sydney World Bank Offices 14 Martin Place, Sydney
This is on the corner of Pitt St and Martin Place - opposite the Westin
Hotel (the former GPO).

ACTU President, Sharan Burrow, will speak at an anti-World Bank rally on
Friday February 9 outside the World Bank's Sydney offices in Martin Place, to
protest at the way Indonesian hotel workers - employed by the Jakarta Shangri-La
Hotel - have been treated.

The Shangri-La Jakarta hotel was funded with an US$86 million joint World
Bank-private sector loan to an Indonesian consortium in 1992. A member of
this same consortium also received World Bank loans in 1996 to expand
oil-palm plantations, which helped to contribut to deforestation in the
environmentally degraded province of Kalimantan.

SUPPORT LOCKED-OUT INDONESIAN WORKERS

The Jakarta Shangri-La hotel locked out its workers on 22nd of December
2000.

The workers had begun protesting against the victimisation and suspension of
their elected union president, Halilintar Nurdin. The suspension of the
union president followed two months of stalled negotiations with hotel managment
(which included reversals on previous agreements) over a new agreement.

On Boxing Day, 2000, the hotel management invited the Jakarta police
into the hotel. The police violently dragged out over two hundred hotel workers
involved in a sit-in. 30 key union activists were held for 24 hours - without
charge - in a Jakarta police cell.

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Shangri-La management has since refused to meet the unions' leaders to
negotiate a collective agreement and an end to the dispute.

The global federation of hotel unions - the IUF - has written to the
Australian-born
President of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, demanding he 'forcefully
inform'
the management of the Shangri-La Jakarta Hotel to respect workers'
rights and to
negotiate in good faith with the local hotel union.

ACTU President, Sharan Burrow, has personally met with Mr Wolfensohn to
discuss the Bank's loan to the owners of the Shangri-La hotel.

At the moment the five-star Shangri-La hotel and resort chain do not have a
hotel in Australia. However, they have recently tendered to the Victorian
Government to build a Shangri-La hotel and residential facility at the
Docklands site in Melbourne.

If you want more information about this long-running dispute visit the
following websites:
http://www.labourstart.org/indonesia/shangrila.shtml
http://www.iuf.org/iuf/Urgent/index.htm#Shangri-La